SIOUX FALLS — Proposed standards for science education in South Dakota’s public schools became the latest Monday to receive criticism from some parents whose values are at odds with the direction of the state Department of Education. The state Board of Education held a public hearing that was split between science professionals who strongly support the new standards and opposing parents who disbelieve climate change and evolution. State law requires the board to hold four public hearings on changes in school standards. The board will reach its decision on the science proposal after the fourth hearing set for May 18...

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a wide range of thinkers, both secular and religious, struggled to make sense of the profound evil of war, particularly Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. One such effort, “The Authoritarian Personality” by Theodore Adorno and three co-authors, opened up a whole new field of political psychology—initially a small niche within the broader field of social psychology—which developed fitfully over the years, but became an increasingly robust subject area in 1980s and 90s, fleshing out a number of distinct areas of cognitive processing in which liberals and conservatives differed from one another. Liberal/conservative...

In the second season of the BBC's hit show "Sherlock," shadowy snipers threaten the eponymous detective's friends by skulking around stairwells with high-powered rifles or infiltrating their homes and workplaces. In real life, targets of assassination in Britain are more likely to be killed while walking their dogs or going shopping, new research finds. The study of contract killings spanning from 1974 to 2013, published in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, finds that assassinations are often rather mundane. "Hit men are familiar figures in films and video games, carrying out 'hits' in underworld bars or from the rooftops with...

Tessa Vanvlerah, 22, allowed Kenneth Kyle, a Californian college professor, to photograph, urinate on, rape and burn her 5-month-old daughter. According to STL Today, Vanvlerah’s attorney’s attempted to get her probation based on a psychological disorder. The judge was not lenient on the woman. She was forced to give up her custody of the infant in 2010 when she was charged with first degree statutory rape, incest, child pornography and sodomy. Kyle was sentenced in March to serve a term of 37 and a half years in federal prison. The child has since been adopted by the foster parent who...

A prominent Dutch social psychologist who once claimed to have shown that the very act of thinking about eating meat makes people behave more selfishly has been found to have faked data throughout much of his career. In one of the worst cases of scientific fraud on record in the Netherlands, a review committee made up of some of the country's top scientists has found that University of Tilburg Prof. Diederik Stapel systematically falsified data to achieve the results he wanted. The university has fired the 45-year-old professor and plans to file fraud charges against him, university spokesman Walther Verhoeven...

Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids (Oct. 17) -- Walter Schumm knows what he's about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had. When one such researcher, Paul Cameron, published a paper in 2006 arguing that children of gay parents were more likely to be gay themselves, the response from the academic press was virulent, to say nothing of the popular press; the Southern...

Our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound.In early 2009, the United States was engaged in an intense public debate over a proposed $800 billion stimulus bill designed to boost economic activity through government borrowing and spending. James Buchanan, Edward Prescott, Vernon Smith, and Gary Becker, all Nobel laureates in economics, argued that while the stimulus might be an important emergency measure, it would fail to improve economic performance. Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, on the other hand, argued that the stimulus would improve the economy and indeed that it should be bigger. Fierce debates can be...

I’ve never been a fan of abstinence education, not that I care much for the alternatives. The whole idea that an educational system that has landed us in 12th place in international science tests could bring down America’s world-class teen pregnancy rate has always struck me as a dubious proposition, no matter what curriculum was being used. This past week’s mini-drama surrounding the release of two conflicting studies related to sex education highlights another reason for skepticism on the subject: the limits of social science, especially when filtered through the largely liberal media. Last Tuesday, the Guttmacher Institute issued a...

Note: The following text is a quote: Social Science Research Assists Navigation of ‘Human Terrain’ By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg Special to American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 18, 2009 – The Defense Department is funding research to help warfighters learn and adapt to the social and cultural norms in their deployment areas, a Navy program officer said in a May 13 webcast of “Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military” on Pentagon Web Radio. “It's been a shift in the thinking of the Department of Defense away from conventional warfare practices to the asymmetric and irregular...

Nature 449, 643 (2007) | doi:10.1038/449643b News French plan for research integration meets with disapproval. The French government is to create a powerful institute for research on immigration and integration. The move has sparked opposition among social scientists, who claim that the body is a thinly veiled bid to exercise political control over their research. The Paris-based institute will be placed under the High Council for Integration, which is affiliated with the prime minister's office. It is expected to be inaugurated shortly by Brice Hortefeux, the immigration minister. The government says that the 23-member institute will serve as a 'one-stop...

A society that runs on the contributions of a few altruistic individuals while leaving the rest of its citizens alone may seem attractive, especially to those of us with lazier tendencies. So why haven't most human societies adopted this model? A new simulation suggests that a group's members reap the most benefits when everyone cooperates--and freeloaders are duly punished. The simulation, set up by economist Bettina Rockenbach of the University of Erfurt, Germany, and colleagues, involved the creation of two virtual worlds. The first--a sort of freeloaders' paradise--allowed people to cooperate as much or as little as they wanted. Participants...

Call for Papers Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets Editors: Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) Barbara Penner (University College-London) "You know what they say about men who hang around women's lavatories. They're asking to have their illusions shattered." - Georgina to Albert, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover We invite contributions for the edited collection Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets. Public toilets are amenities with a functional, even a civic, purpose. Yet they also act as the unconscious of public spaces. They can be a haven: a place to regain composure,...

A few years back, I wrote a critical survey of Princeton University's architecture for the school's alumni magazine. The article argued that the buildings that had gone up on the campus since the 1950's -- the modernist buildings -- were for the birds. It pointed to the campus's much-loved Collegiate Gothic architecture as an eminently appropriate model for future construction. The response to the article was pretty much what you'd expect. First there were the normal people -- students and alumni alike -- who tended to be quite supportive of my critique. Then there were the architects. In a letter...

Chapter 1: The "Problem" of Maternal Desire IT WOULD SEEM THAT EVERYTHING it is possible to say about motherhood in America has already been said. Beckoning us from every magazine rack, beaming out from every channel, is a solution or a revelation or a confession about mothering. Yet in the midst of all the media chatter about staying on track, staying in shape, time crunches, time-savers, and time-outs, there is something unvoiced about the experience of motherhood itself. It sways our choices and haunts our dreams, yet we shy away from examining it with our full attention. Treated both as...

This is a good time of year to step back from daily events and commune with big thinkers, so I've been having a rather one-sided discussion about this whole Iraq business with Michael Oakeshott. One of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Oakeshott lived and died, in 1990, in England. As Andrew Sullivan, who did his dissertation on him, has pointed out, the easiest way to grasp Oakeshott is to know that he loved Montaigne and Shakespeare. He loved Montaigne for his skepticism and Shakespeare for his array of eccentric characters. Oakeshott seemed to measure a society by...